Express Pharma

‘We believe in creating innovative solutions for a variety of industries’

Sudarshan Ananth, Territory Vice President and Business Head – HVAC & Transport, India Climate Business Unit, Ingersoll Rand, talks about new launches from brand, Trane India and their benefits for the pharma industry, in discussion with Sachin Jagdale

Which products have been launched under Trane brand?

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Sudarshan Ananth

Trane is a leading global provider of indoor comfort systems and solutions (HVAC systems, controls and services) for commercial, residential and industrial applications and a brand of Ingersoll Rand.

Trane’s integrated solutions help reduce energy use and costs while meeting high levels of comfort and performance critical to business operations of its customers.

Trane has recently announced new products in applied and unitary stream. The new range of products is more energy proficient, raising the bar for efficiency, cost optimisation, sustainability and reliability along with showcasing Trane’s strength.

Trane water-cooled screw chiller with AFD (RTHD):

This best in class chiller offers part-load energy efficiency and reduces annual operating and lifecycle costs .Compared with fixed speed chiller designs, the RTHD with AFD offers a part-load efficiency improvement of 20-35 per cent while maintaining the same COP efficiency level. This will typically result in an annualised energy saving of 10-15 per cent in chiller energy consumption.

The industrial-grade design of the helical rotary chiller and its versatile operation capability make it an ideal choice for application for a wide spectrum of building such as industrial plants, commercial/ office buildings, hospitals, hotel and schools.

Trane air cooled screw chiller Sintesis (RTAF):

Sintesis is born out of Trane commitment to energy efficiency. This air cooled screw chiller comes with three different types of efficiency level chillers with the highest EER up to 3.4 and ESEER up to 4.8. Trane has focused on providing sound levels at the lowest level with an extra low noise. Trane AFD fitted on this chiller provides an excellent part load efficiency resulting on a low total cost of ownership. The chiller comes with superior energy efficiency at a low noise level and it is smart and versatile with the highest reliability in the industry.

Interactive Hi wall series and Concealed units R410:

The environment-friendly Trane Interactive products are aimed at providing high degree of convenience, comfort and control that one always needs and make everyday living simple and intuitive.

Some of the revolutionary features of the Trane Interactive Technology are:

  • Multi Room Control – Control up to 18 Trane ACs and a door lock, from anywhere in the house through multi-room mode on the remote. You can switch on/ off, change temperature or fan speed of any Trane AC in any room of your home.
  • Efficiency meter – The efficiency meter on the remote enables you to keep real time control of your Trane ACs energy consumption by helping you in choosing the right set point based on the weather outside
  • Trane weather sync mode – Trane Weather Sync mode syncs the operations of the AC with the weather outside and automatically adjusts the temperature inside to give you optimum comfort.
  • No pointing – The Trane Interactive technology allows you to control Interactive ACs without having to point remote towards them.
  • Service alerts – The interactive remote displays easy to understand service alerts which are clear, crisp and actionable.
  • R410 – Environment friendly and efficient refrigerant.

Explain the application of these products in the pharma industry.

Energy efficiency is a key cost driver in the pharma / healthcare industry and HVAC companies offer a variety of technology solutions HVAC systems to increase energy efficiency during partial load.

We at Ingersoll Rand believe in creating innovative solutions for a variety of industries. We bring the expertise to pharma and healthcare with solutions that are reliable and sustainable in the areas of compressed air systems, tools, security technologies, HVAC systems and mobile/static refrigeration. Our constant focus is on establishing comfortable and efficient pharma and healthcare environments.

Some specific examples of requirement in healthcare-related industries today include quality of compressed air, energy efficient building management systems, FDA compliant climate control systems, safety and security of facility/ equipment and safe transportation of temperature controlled drugs. Ingersoll Rand offers a solution to each of these requirement. Trane as an organisation is providing retrofit options for existing chillers to achieve part load efficiencies with a variable speed drive. Our solutions of auto tube cleaning for water quality stressed environment and high efficiency air cooled central plant makes it optimum for capital and operational utilisation.

There are various HVAC requirements in the pharma industry, the two major requirements of the pharma industry are maintaining the temperature and maintaining the humidity.

Trane provides HVAC systems like chillers, air handling units and the allied controls that is used to manage the pharma manufacturing environment

Trane provides chillers that are energy efficient during full load and part load conditions and as well support in partial and full heat recovery where humidity need to be managed

Trane chiller plant manager and the other controls offerings help the pharma industry to maintain precise control over the manufacturing environment.

Trane provides solutions for all the manufacturing environments like drug formulations, packaging, filling etc.

Who are your pharma clients in India?

Our chillers are contributing to almost all major pharma companies in maintaining their manufacturing environment. Major pharma companies like DRL, Ranbaxy, Cipla and Glenmark are some of our key customers.

What percentage of your revenue comes from the pharma business?

Around 15 per cent of our chiller revenues are contributed by the pharma and life sciences vertical and the industry is growing at a CAGR of eight per cent.

Which are going to be the driving factors for your pharma business in India in future?

Healthcare for all is a focus area for both central and state governments both in India and other developed nations like US. This industry has direct bearing on growth of pharma and hospital sector. The pharma industry is expected to touch $55 billion by 2020 from the $12 billion levels in 2013 and with 60-70 per cent of revenues coming from the exports. Indian pharma manufacturing facilities registered with US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) as on March 2014 was the highest at 523 for any country outside the US.

Hence, with the pharma sector poised to grow, especially with the state government providing appropriate infrastructure for growth, we feel there is a huge opportunity for HVAC players to look at newer playing fields.

Safe delivery of drug is paramount to realise the benefit for the producer and user. Hence, controlled air environment is necessary for temperature-controlled transportation of pharma products from source/ manufacturing facility to storage or distribution, and within manufacturing facility both for temperature-sensitive raw material and intermediate or finished product.

The localisation push will necessitate a capacity expansion in the industry and in turn will help growing usage of HVAC.

Identification of new export markets and opportunities for Indian companies in china will also lead to capacity expansion in the industry.

Which are the new products in the pipeline for the pharma industry?

We have launched two new products this year. We are planning to launch our Ecowise products very soon. Ecowise comes up with R513a refrigerant which has lesser ODP than most of the current available refrigerants used in the chiller.

We are planning to launch our Air Fi controller offerings which has wireless controllers with best in class technology.

Apart from this, our new modular chiller with VFD technology will be launched this year, which can be used for both process as well comfort applications

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